Review Essays in Israel Studies

Books on Israel, Volume V

Edited by Laura Zittrain Eisenberg & Neil Caplan

Subjects: Political Science
Series: SUNY series in Israeli Studies
Paperback : 9780791444221, 321 pages, January 2000
Hardcover : 9780791444214, 321 pages, January 2000

Alternative formats available from:

Read Excerpt View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy
Request a Media Review Copy

Table of contents

Introduction

1. Ivory Tower and Embassy: Interview with Itamar Rabinovich

Part I:
History, Economics, and Politics

2. The Yishuv's Early Capabilities: Organization, Leadership, and Policies

Tobe Shanok

3. The Transition to a Market Economy: The Road Half Taken

Ofira Seliktar

4. Israel as a Liberal Democracy: Civil Rights in the Jewish State

Ilan Peleg

5. "Normal" or "Special"? Israel's Relationships with America and Germany in Historical Perspective

David Rodman

Part II:
Society and Culture

6. Mythmaking and Commemoration in Israeli Culture

David C. Jacobson

7. Prophecy of Wrath: Israeli Society as Reflected in Satires for Children

Yaakova Sacerdoti

8. Women's Issues in the Literary Marketplace: Anthologies of Israeli Women Writers

Hanita Brand

9. Yemenite Jews on the Zionist Altar

Nitza Druyan

Part III:
Israel in the Region

10. Policy Transformation in the Middle East: Arms Control Regimes and National Security Reconciled

Hemda Ben-Yehuda

11. Palestinian Sovereignty and Israeli Security: Dilemmas of the Permanent-Status Negotiations

Naomi Weinberger

12. The Domestic-International Confluence: The Challenge of Israel's Water Problems

Jeffrey Sosland

Part IV:
Views of Israel from the Arab World

13. On Opposite Sides of the Hill: Syrian and Israeli Perspectives

Eyal Zisser

14. Egyptian Representation of Israeli Culture: Normalizing Propaganda or Propagandizing Normalization?

Deborah A. Starr

15. Arab-Israeli Economic Relations and Relative Gains Concerns

Maen F. Nsour

16. The Debate over Normalization: Adonis and His Arab Critics

Muhammad Muslih

Contributors

Introduces the cutting edge issues and current scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of Israel Studies.

Description

Representing a wide array of disciplines: economics, history, literature, political science, anthropology, and sociology, this book offers original examinations of the state of scholarship about Israel, as well as insightful assessments of contemporary Israeli society, politics, economy, and culture. The contributors review and analyze more than sixty recent publications, half of them in Hebrew or Arabic, showcasing important literature not readily accessible to European and North American readers. Continuing the tradition established by the preceding volumes, Review Essays in Israel Studies offers a rich and varied treatment of new scholarship and enhances our understanding of Israel studies today.

Laura Zittrain Eisenberg is Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of My Enemy's Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, 1900–1948 and coauthor (with Neil Caplan) of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: Patterns, Problems, Possibilities. Neil Caplan is Coordinator of the Humanities Department and Jewish Studies Programme at Vanier College in Montreal. He is the author of Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question, 1917–1925; The Lausanne Conference, 1949: A Case Study in Middle East Peacemaking; and Futile Diplomacy.

Reviews

"Review Essays is a must for any library with a serious Israel or Middle East collection. " — Jewish Book World

"There are a variety of collections of articles about Israel currently available. Usually, these are not broad overviews, but rather collections of specialized articles on a particular topic, such as the crisis in democracy in Israel or religion or Israeli society. This volume is unique in two ways: it covers a variety of disciplines (political science, history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and cultural studies), and it reviews the recent, mostly academic, literature in these areas. " — James Armstrong, State University of New York at Plattsburgh